Creating Strong Password For Your Online Accounts

First and foremost, never, ever, allow your web browser to “save/remember” your passwords. Even though companies claim to protect your “saved” password from hackers, the best practice is ALWAYS to type your password. 

Very often we see on the news that hackers stole information including passwords of users of big companies on the web. So we better be safe than sorry. It is kind of annoying but this will both keep your accounts safe and prevent your from forgetting your passwords. So if you agree with what we said above, then let’s go ahead and start creating real strong and easy to remember passwords:

• To test whether your password is strong enough before you start using it, here is a link of a website that checks how strong your password is. https://www.uic.edu/apps/strong-password

• Replace letters by symbols. This is a very simple trick that will make your password really strong and still be easy for you to  remember:
  • $tr0ngP@$w0rd (StrongPassword). As you can see, it is easy for you to read/remember this password and at the same time, it is considered a very strong password;

• Camel Case words: Make the first letter of each word of your password Upper Case. Do not forget to mix it with symbols:
  • IC@nR3m3mb3rTh!$ (I Can Remember This). Another strong password yet quite easy to memorize.

• If it is easier for your to remember your kids name, try this:
  • Let’s say your daughter’s name is Isabella and she was born in 2001. You could try this password: !$@b3ll@2oo! (Isabella2001).
  • Using dates: Dates are usually to short for passwords. But you can add some special characters to make it stronger like this: BD@t3:10/04/1980 (BDate: 10/04/1980)

So as you can see it is not that hard to create and remember strong passwords. All you need to do is create your own pattern for passwords. It may be quite hard at the beginning, but after you start using your patterns, it will look real simple. Now it is time to practice. Create your passwords and test them using the website listed above.

P.S.: Write or print your passwords and keep them in safe place until you get used to your patterns. Good luck and do not forget to leave us your feedback.

If you want to get further information regarding strong password, visit the University Of Illinois At Chicago’s Password strength test page.